Wonder Drug by Stephen Trzeciak & Anthony Mazzarelli

Author:Stephen Trzeciak & Anthony Mazzarelli [Trzeciak, Stephen & Mazzarelli, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO RUN PEOPLE OVER

As we go through life, we hear many sayings about how to behave, from parents, mentors, and public figures. You can see how much we appreciate inspirational quotes from great thinkers from the way we’ve sprinkled them on these pages. Leadership seems to be one area in particular where you can apply the principles of those sayings, especially if they’re about serving others.

One saying that has filtered in over the years is “People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.” Horrible Bosses are such a stereotype, and so reviled, that Jason Bateman made a movie about them—twice. Needless to say, tyrannical leaders are not focused on how they can best serve others. But did they start out as a disagreeable, high self-interested, low other-interested types, or did power transform them?

Rasmus Hougaard, author of Compassionate Leadership: Doing Hard Things the Human Way, co-wrote an article20 in the Harvard Business Review about “hubris syndrome,” a phenomenon originally described by English physician and parliamentarian David Owen.21 Hubris syndrome is a mental disorder that occurs in people who have possessed power due to sustained overwhelming success. Spending so much time at the top, with all its pressures and responsibilities, can change people’s ability to feel empathy and compassion. Wild success can rewire Big Shot brains to care less about the little people. Call it neural hardening. The only way to reverse it is to practice compassion or having the “intent to contribute to the happiness and well-being of others,” wrote Hougaard. Habitual compassion is a countermeasure for hubris-related loss of empathy. Since empathy is an essential skill for a leader, proactive compassion allows a powerful person to reconnect to others and perform at his or her own job at a higher level.

“Never let them see you sweat” is an aphorism about making people think you’re braver or more chill than you really are. People apply it at work to raise their competence profile. A more helpful saying for leaders would be “Never let them see you act like a jerk.” According to a Western Washington University study,22 when both male and female leaders displayed “negative emotional tone”—anger or sadness—their underlings assessed the bosses as less effective. The drop in esteem was significant. When the bosses expressed a neutral emotional display, there was no associated drop in employee’s opinions of their competence. Interesting (sexist) finding: male bosses who displayed sadness had much lower effectiveness ratings, perhaps because, culturally, men’s sadness is perceived as weak. Female bosses took a rating hit if they displayed sadness or anger. Unless women showed anything but positivity or neutrality, they lost some respect from their employees. It’s a burden for male and female bosses to hide their real emotions at work. Expressing yourself negatively might feel cathartic, but it can have a bad effect on others. An other-focused approach would be to put the feelings of your staff first, and wait until after you leave the office to get angry and throw things and/or cry.

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